Cinnamon Rolls With Two Delectable Frosting Options

Warning: If you visit my site strictly for my Weight Watchers recipes, turn away quickly because the next three recipes I’m posting are sinful. With that being said, I made them for a very worthy cause. You see all week my wonderful 7 year old son Josh has been at our church Kids Camp. This year it was held outside at a great park and each day held 6 hours of non stop, action filled, Jesus loving FUN! What a blessing the teachers and helpers have been to our kiddos! They are top notch and our church is blessed with amazing people who love on our children. I wanted to say thank you so this morning, the last day of camp, I delivered two batches of cinnamon rolls and two batches of apple fritters. Stay tuned for the fritter recipe because yes Virginia, you most certainly want to know how to make those.

Now I LOVE Pioneer Woman. Truly I do. But I’ve had her cinnamon rolls and while I am thoroughly smitten with the maple frosting concept, the rolls themselves aren’t enough to make my skirt fly up. The ones found below do it every time, even if I’m wearing jeans 🙂 So what I do is cover one pan of cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting and the other with PW’s maple frosting. Who doesn’t love options?!
I also make these the night before I want to eat them. It’s so nice to wake up, pop them in the oven and not have to do a bunch of work in the morning. And the glorious smell… there goes the skirt again.

Cinnamon Rolls
Makes approximately 12-18 rolls depending on size

1 cup sugar
2.5 T cinnamon
2 pkgs. Active Dry Yeast (or 4.5 teaspoons)
3 T flour
1 T granulated sugar
1 cup warm water (about 110 degrees)
1 cup warm milk (about 110 degrees)
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 t salt
2 lg. eggs, beaten
8 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, melted
3 T granulated sugar

Cream Cheese Frosting:
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1 1/2 t milk
1/2 t vanilla

Maple Frosting:
1/2 bag Powdered Sugar
1 teaspoons Maple Flavoring
1/4 cup Milk
2 T Melted Butter
2 T Brewed Coffee
Dash of Salt

Method:

In a medium bowl, mix 1 cup sugar with 2 1/2 T of cinnamon and set aside to use for filling.
In another medium sized bowl, mix yeast, 3 T flour and 1 T sugar. Add warm water and stir. Let mixture sit for about 5-10 minutes until yeast activates and mixture starts to bubble.
In a the bowl of an electric mixer, combine milk, 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup melted butter, salt, eggs, and 6 cups flour. Add yeast mixture and continue mixing until soft dough forms. Add remaining 2 cups flour and combine until a firm dough forms. Place dough on a floured surface and kneed for 8-10 minutes.
Butter a large bowl with 1 T butter. Place dough in bowl and turn to coat with butter on all sides. Cover and let dough rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.
Note – I turn my oven on the “keep warm” setting (about 145 degrees) and heat it for about 10 minutes. Then I turn the oven off and let my dough rise inside the oven.
Remove dough from bowl, punch down and roll out to a 15″ x 20″ rectangle. Brush surface with about 1/4 of the melted butter. Sprinkle surface with reserved cinnamon sugar mixture. Starting on the side away from you begin tightly rolling the dough toward you until you have what looks like a log of dough. Using a serrated sharp knife, cut the roll into 12-18 slices depending on what size roll you’d like. The slices should be about 3/4″ each. Butter your baking pans and sprinkle with 3 T of sugar. Place rolls closely together, cut side down, in the dish. Brush with remaining butter. Cover rolls and let them rise for an additional 45 minutes. Alternatively, you can cover the rolls and place them in the refrigerator overnight. When you remove the rolls from the refrigerator let them sit for about 20 minutes before baking.
Bake rolls in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Meanwhile mix each of the batches of frosting ingredients. Remove rolls from over and spread with frosting while still warm.

Note: these come together so easily when using my Kitchenaid Mixer. If you don’t have one you can certainly mix by hand. You’ll burn lots of calories and have some buff arms 🙂